


I keep wanting to give you what is already yours

by middlemarch



Series: Plum dimension [1]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Birthday Presents, Cat, F/M, Gen, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 00:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7244443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is Mary's thirty-first birthday, a cold night not fit for a celebration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I keep wanting to give you what is already yours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ultrahotpink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultrahotpink/gifts).



Mary could not regret this birthday. She sat now, at nine o’clock, when the evening had just tipped over into night, and Plum was on her lap, purring. She had tamed the calico as much as she could, with dishes of milk and chicken guts and her hand gentle at the scruff of Plum’s neck. It had gotten easier as the days grew shorter and colder; Mary supposed she had a greater appeal now with her warm rooms and plentiful scraps. The streets were muddy and sometimes a thin ice began to collect in the puddles. It always cracked sharply underfoot, which must have been quite unpleasant for tender paws.

The day had gone by as she expected, not smoothly, but she had met each challenge and been satisfied with the resolution. A small family from Delaware was bedded down in the spare room and the mother had thanked her profusely for what Mary had considered the small services she’d been able to provide the injured son. She had given most of the credit to Dr. Foster, who was far more deserving of it, but it had gladdened her heart when the woman took her hand and pressed it and said she would pray for her.

A year ago, she hadn’t even been able to wonder what this birthday would bring. She had cared then only for little Joe and Mattie. Even with Caroline, who sought so diligently to console her, she felt numb. It was only the small boys who could still awaken her interest, only the heaviness of them on her lap, their tousled heads warm against her breasts, that would make her feel some rightness within her body. She had been so ready for a child, her own baby, but it had not happened and now it never would. She did not need Plum as she had needed her nephews-- to keep her bound to herself, her soul inhabiting her flesh, but the cat was a wonderful comfort. Plum was all of a piece with the fire that was lit in the hearth, the thick woolen curtains, faded a little but still lovely cloth, hung again and pulled shut against the night. She must go to her bed soon but she would give herself this last little gift, the only one she would get, before she retired.

The door opened and she resigned herself to a task she had not anticipated, a need she hadn’t met. She prepared to set Plum down from her lap and stroked her hand through her soft fur one last time but she was startled when she caught sight of Jed, his arms full with a crowded tray. There was a teapot with cups and saucers, a plate of something and a slightly rumpled cloth.

“Jedediah, I thought you had gone to bed. Shall I help you with that?” she asked. His cravat hung a bit askew, loosened during the last surgery, and his coat was wrinkled but his dark eyes were bright.

“No, no. It’s no trouble, let me just put it down here. Ah, no spills!” he replied. She could hear the smile in his voice even better than she could see it.

“What is all this?” Mary said. She recognized the china; she’d been so pleased when she unearthed it from a forgotten cupboard. Emma had recognized it and traced the rich blue willows, the curling leaves, the white spaces in between, with one tapered finger. She’d only said, “I remember this” and nothing more. Mary thought her eyes were darker than the blue glaze, as dark as night falling.

“Your dedication to your own paperwork and your, shall we say, gentle exhortations that I attend to mine in a timely fashion has found you out, Mary. I finally got through an unholy backlog of documentation yesterday and what did I discover? Today is your birthday and yet it has gone unmarked. That is unacceptable, so, as Executive Officer, I have corrected the oversight,” Jed said, as pleased with himself as she’d ever seen.

“I supposed I am caught out,” she agreed, her hand soft along Plum’s spine.

“You are, madam. I’ve brought you some tea, instead of that endless coffee, even though you Bostonians have an unfortunate history of trying to brew it in your harbor. I managed to scare up a little something sweet to go with it,” he replied. As he had spoken, he’d poured the tea out into the two cups and carefully added milk to both; he’d made hers the mellow color of a cameo, as she preferred. Jed removed the white cloth and revealed a little crockery dish of milk which he placed on the bare floor near her hem and Plum quickly jumped from Mary’s lap to her treat. There was a little noise as she lapped the milk, a homely sound layered with the fire’s uneven crackle that Mary hadn’t realized she missed. He picked up the plate and offered it to her. It held a few little cakes, fragrant with aniseed and sprinkled with sugar. 

“But, these are fresh! Where did you get them?” she said.

“I admit it, I had some help. I asked Miss Green and she kindly offered up the services of her Belinda. They’re evidently paying her now, so you can eat these without any particular Abolitionist guilt,” he said, forestalling her misgivings. Belinda had a very light hand with pastry and Mary knew she herself could not have made a dessert as fine.

“You will join me, then? You must or I won’t eat a bite,” she declared. He smiled broadly at that and agreed with a nod.

It was very pleasant, sitting in the firelight with the cat nestled against her skirts, sipping a hot cup of tea and with such an amiable companion. Jed sat comfortably in the armchair beside her, his legs crossed, conveying such a sense of ease. His dark eyes rested on her with a fond regard and something else she shied away from naming. She rarely let herself consider her feelings for Jedediah as she knew there would be pain alloyed to the delight. She could not break the silver from the gold of the coin. It was very easy, too easy on a night like this, to imagine this was her own snug parlor and Jed her husband, a bed neatly covered with clean linen and a pieced quilt she had made waiting for them upstairs. She was the widow of a cherished man so she could anticipate what would come of Jed’s hands on her, the effect of his low voice in the darkness, how warm his mouth would be and how welcome. She thought, when rarely she let herself, there would be an urgency she had not known before, a thrilling intensity she had the sense of without ever having experienced its reality. She had not been this woman when she married Gustav and he had never looked at her with such recognition; she felt the trace of Jed’s eyes along her nape, the small of her back, the slight, soft curve of her belly. She sighed and he heard her. He took a breath, then another that sounded like decision.

“Those lines that I before have writ do lie,  
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;  
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why  
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.  
But reckoning Time, whose million'd accidents  
Creep in 'twixt vows and change decrees of kings,  
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,  
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things;  
Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,  
Might I not then say 'Now I love you best,'  
When I was certain o'er incertainty,  
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?  
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,  
To give full growth to that which still doth grow?”

Jed had recited the sonnet in a tone she hadn’t heard from him before. It was not the measured voice he would use at an evening social, when the guests would provide the entertainment, taking turns with recitations and duets on harp and piano. Nor was it the halting hesitance of a student struggling to recall first this word, then the next, to string them together to evoke a meaning the young scholar barely grasped. He knew this poem well, so well it was no longer a memory but a breathing part of him, the form that best fit the secret truth of his heart. And if he paused, it was only to let the phrase linger in her ear, as if he whispered it there to her while he stroked her unbound hair from her face and held her close to him, while the candle guttered and splashed them with its pale amber light.

“That is my favorite sonnet,” he said and she nodded in response. She knew how he meant it as a gift and what she was meant to accept. He rose, slipped a slim book from his coat pocket and held it out to her. She took it without even a moment’s consideration. Whatever it was would be her heart’s desire.

“Happy birthday, Mary. Good night,” he said. There didn’t seem to be anything else left for him to say and he did not wait for her to thank him. He walked quickly from the room and closed the door behind him. There was only the sound of the flames at their work and her heartbeat, moving her through time, little by little, from his declaration towards a future she could not envision.

She felt the cover of the book in her hand. It was a worn volume of Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_ , the corners a bit rounded, the once dark cover mottled. It was clearly not new and she rather thought it was not simply old but had the appearance of a book that had been eagerly read and re-read, that had bared its secrets as many times as it was asked. She opened it and saw his name in the top right corner, “Jedediah Thurmond Foster,” the ink brown with age but the same copperplate she knew from his surgical notes. Across the middle of the page, there was an inscription, “To Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, On the occasion of her birthday, November 3, 1862, With sincerest regard, JTF.” This was written in the same hand but the ink was fresh, still black as the barrel of an oiled bayonet. She let her fingers glide across the words where he had pulled the pen. Had it been effortless? How long had he paused before he had chosen what to say? She could not fault him. The inscription was correct, propriety maintained as best he could manage in the gift of a book. It was not costly or overly personal in society’s view; to Mary, it was precious, the intimacy in touching the pages he had turned, hearing the sonnets again, always now in his baritone, when she read them.

She let her hands move through the pages. Here and there, there was an underlining, a date, but never an ink-blot or the sepia shadow of coffee spatters. She pretended to herself she was only idly looking, but she stopped as she knew she would when she reached Sonnet 115. The words, delicate and certain, their elegance not disguising the declaration, sat before her, their black edges sharp against the soft ivory of the page. She almost did not notice the marking at the base of the poem. Jedediah had used a soft lead pencil, not the emphatic ink of the other notes. The letters were formed in the same hand but she knew he had written them with apprehension, a tender concern for her moreso than himself. She hadn’t thought he could confess more or that there would be any other birthday gift forthcoming but she had been wrong. She would read the poem again and again but she could never hear her own voice, only his, low and ardent, and it would always end with “sweet Mary!”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday present story for ultrahotpink, who always reads, always comments, and always makes sure to appreciate everyone else's contributions to this fandom. I wanted Mary to have a nice birthday, even if she didn't get a party and even if Jed couldn't give her anything more extravagant thought I thought giving her his favorite book of poetry was frankly even more romantic.
> 
> The title is from W.S. Merwin's lovely poem "A Birthday"
> 
> Something continues and I don't know what to call it  
> though the language is full of suggestions  
> in the way of language  
> but they are all anonymous  
> and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones  
> these nights we hear the horses running in the rain  
> it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here  
> the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed  
> smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house  
> down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes  
> the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you  
> I keep wanting to give you what is already yours  
> it is the morning of the mornings together  
> breath of summer oh my found one  
> the sleep in the same current and each waking to you  
> when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.


End file.
